Ross Valley firefighters had just received a refresher course in how to deliver a baby, when, real life kicked in.

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LONDON - OCTOBER 23: A fire truck races to an emergency call October 23, 2002 in London, United Kingdom. Deputy British Prime Minister John Prescott has warned that firefighters will be risking lives if they go on strike for a 40 percent pay raise as they have threatened. Full-time firefighters are planning to begin the series of eight day walkouts over 36 days October 29, 2002. The Army, Royal Navy and RAF are on standby to provide cover along with 4,000 part-time firefighters with the Retained Firefighters Union (RFU). (Photo by Scott Barbour/Getty Images)

Ross Valley firefighters had just received a refresher course in how to deliver a baby, when, real life kicked in.

But this time, the baby delivery wasn't a simulated session in a classroom. It was a real infant delivered in a car pulled over to the side of the road.

"It wasn't an ideal scenario," Capt. Mark Weston, the baby deliverer, said Tuesday in a phone interview. "But it was just one of those things that we do."

It began as a typical training day at the Ross Valley firehouse on Monday in San Anselmo. A Marin County doctor, Mark Bason-Mitchell, was teaching the team about childbirth and obstetrics. At 7:40 p.m., Engine 19 was dispatched to an "imminent childbirth" on Sir Francis Drake Boulevard not far from downtown San Anselmo.

A police offfcer yelled for help.

Weston, who has delivered babies before, jumped right in, assisting the mother deliver what appeared to be a healthy baby boy in the back of her Hyundai.

As soon as the umbilical cord was snipped, paramedics whisked mother and baby to Marin General Hospital.